New Website!

Head on over to www.drfireballphotography.com (rather than the old and sad .co.uk)

Aim will be to have blog and portfolio in the same place

Let me know what y'all think

Cheers

DrF

The Holy Grail

Unbelieveable - what can I say - chuffed to bits. Having spent ages trying to get prints that match what I see on screen (often too dark or too vivid, too magenta etc) I have at last sorted it all out.

Previously I have been using a Colormunki Photo alongside my Epson R2880 and Sony Vaio Laptop. Yes I hear you shouting out there that if I had gone Mac none of this would have taken so long. I am indeed "Mac-curious", "Mac-smitten" indeed but as long as this laptop is working I struggle to justify a new OS etc. Anyhoo I was calibrating the printer to the screen with the Colormunki Photo but inevitably the laprop screen was seriously letting me down. If for example I set a brightness level when setting up the profile - the monitor could not hold that one bit.

So the solution? Just bought a Eizo CG243W from the Focus on Imaging show. Saved a few hundred quid to boot.

Lots of things changing at once however - upgraded to LR4 (with soft proofing capabilities) and have just this evening installed a Fotospeed CIS. Loving LR4 (had the beta) and cannot tell the difference (I printed some shots out with the original Epson cartidges to compare against) with Fotospeed's inks.

Have spent a while working out the workflow and in essence whether to calibrate with the Colormunki software or the ColorNavigator - have gone with Colornav in the first instance but if I need to create my own ICC profiles for papers that I cannot get one for then I will revert to Xrite's option. Good to have choices although I must admit this can be a little overwhelming at first.

Hope that might help crystallise someone else's decision making and of course if you want to know my exact settings please just ask.

Cheers

DrF

Tony

Tony, originally uploaded by DrFireball.

Got up early for this one - but almost not early enough. Used an app on the iphone to see when sunrise was but had not taken into account the walk out. Still pleased with the results and really digging environmental portraiture. Also got a number fo great shots with Tony hitting a berm and then a jump - more to come on Flickr.

Lighting wise I used a lastolite trisync with 2 580's - gelled with a 1/4 cto and a third for a touch of rim lighting camera left. All controlled with the flex pw's and an AC3.

Great setup - hope you like

DrF

Boxer

Boxer, originally uploaded by DrFireball.

Great opportunity today to shoot the current welter weight tri service boxing champ. A true gentle giant.

Shot with an elinchrom ranger through the 135cm deep octa. I removed both inner and outer diffusers then put a silver deflector on to create a large beauty dish. This was then placed high above and looking straight down at Tam. Behind was a large mirror that then provided a touch of rim lighting.

Post production was in PS using a new trick I've discovered with unsharp mask then b&w conversion in SEP 2.

Reminds me of a certain famous shot of an Afghan woman in Nat Geographic but perhaps that's me being conceited!

As usual more on flickr.

Thanks for stopping by

DrF